Flight 1

Louis Bleroit
After years of honing his piloting skills, Blériot decided to try for the thousand-pound prize offered by the London Daily Mail for a successful crossing of the English Channel.
Blériot had two rivals for the prize, both of whom failed to complete the crossing. The first was Hubert Latham, a French national of English extraction. He was favoured by both the United Kingdom and France to win. He had arrived first and attempted the crossing on 19 July, but 6 miles (9.7 km) from his destination of Dover the Antoinette IV developed engine trouble and was forced to make the world's first landing of an aircraft on the sea.[9[[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Bl%C3%A9riot#cite_note-walsh-8|]]] The other pilot, Charles de Lambert, was a Russian aristocrat with French ancestry, and one of Wilbur Wright's students. However, Lambert was injured in a major crash during a test flight, forcing him to quit the competition.
On 25 July 1909, the three rivals all arrived at the seaside town of Calais, France. Blériot had a badly burned foot, caused when a gasoline line broke on his #VIII machine during one of his trial runs. Despite this he did not withdraw.[7[[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Bl%C3%A9riot#cite_note-PBS1-6|]]] The #VIII was Blériot's largest and most successful design before the #XI. After the crash in the #VIII which had left him with the burnt foot, the #XI was the only aircraft he had available to make the Channel flight.
The French government provided the destroyer //Escopette// to escort and observe his plane during the trip to Dover. (After his crash into the sea, Latham had been rescued by the French torpedo-destroyer Harpon on 19 July[9[[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Bl%C3%A9riot#cite_note-walsh-8|]]]). Blériot used his own aircraft design, the Blériot XI, a structurally strong but simple and manoeuvrable monoplane. This was powered by a 25-horsepower, Anzani 3-cylinder semi-radiual (or fan) engine with a two-bladed fixed-pitch wooden propeller. His engine was barely as powerful as the smallest outboard motor found on a modern day pleasure boats.[10[[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Bl%C3%A9riot#cite_note-9|]]][11[[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Bl%C3%A9riot#cite_note-10|]]]
He took off when dawn broke, just after 4:30 AM, on 25 July 1909. He later reported, in a telegram to The Washington Post, that he had needed to accelerate his engine to 1,200 revolutions per minute, almost its top speed, to clear telegraph wires at the edge of the cliff near the runway's field. Then he reduced his speed to give the XI an average airspeed of approximately 40 miles per hour (64 km/h) at an altitude of about 250 feet (76 m). Soon after, inclement weather began to form, with the Channel becoming rougher. Blériot lost sight of any landmarks, and rapidly outpaced the destroyer escort. He stated: “[f]or more than 10 minutes I was alone, isolated, lost in the midst of the immense sea, and I did not see anything on the horizon or a single ship
Louis Blériot (1 July 1872 – 2 August 1936) was a French aviator, inventor and engineer. In 1909 he completed the first flight across a large body of water in a heavier-than-air craft, when he crossed the English Channel. For this achievement, he received a prize of GB£1000 (5,000 dollars; US 1910).[2[[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Bl%C3%A9riot#cite_note-NYTimes1-1|]]][3[[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Bl%C3%A9riot#cite_note-2|]]][4[[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Bl%C3%A9riot#cite_note-NYTimes2-3|]]] He also is credited as the first person to make a working monoplane.[5[[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Bl%C3%A9riot#cite_note-Suite101.com1-4|]]] Blériot was a pioneer of the sport of air racing.